He focused instead on old pain to keep him from causing new. “I knew it then, too. Didn’t seem to help much. She’d said she loved me, too. Still she left. Ripped my heart out to lose her and that boy, Jo.” He steeled himself to meet her gaze. To not look away. “I thought I’d found a family. I hadn’t. No way in hell am I going through that again.”
Jo stepped up to him, laid both hands on his chest, and he swore he could feel her pulse beat right through the palms of her hands. “I’m not asking you to go through that again, Cash.” Shaking her head, she stared up at him and said, “I’m not talking about leaving you. I’m talking about staying.”
“For now.” He wouldn’t believe. Not again. He’d spent most of his life waiting for people he loved to stay—yet they always left. Always. No reason to believe anything had changed.
“You know,” Jo said, taking a step back, lowering her hands. “I just realized something. This whole time, I thought I was the one stuck in the past. But it was never really me, Cash. It was you.”
He rubbed his chest, still feeling the imprint of her hands. “I’m not stuck anywhere,” he said, not sure anymore if he was trying to convince her—or himself.
“Sure you are,” she said on a choked-off laugh that sounded as if it had scraped her throat in its escape. “I tell you I love you and you tell me no thanks, because you don’t want to be hurt if I leave you?”
It sounded stupid said out loud like that, but damn it, Cash had the scars to prove that the pain was real. And what he felt for Jo Marconi was so much more than he’d ever felt before—the devastation when he lost her would be that much more, too. And just like that, his resolve strengthened and his heart iced over, despite how much he wanted her. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Jo.”
“No, you really don’t,” she said, sniffing just a little and blinking back what he feared was a sheen of tears in her eyes. When a strong woman cried, she could break a man—and Cash felt his insides shake.
“I actually think I’m starting to understand something about you.” She tipped her head to one side and that ponytail swung behind her head, rippling in the wind. “All those women you’ve been with. They all left and you think that proves something, don’t you? That no one will stay.”
“You think it doesn’t?” He kept his gaze off that fall of hair that he wanted to touch so badly.
“I think you spend the night with lonely, unhappy women. I think you deliberately choose to sleep with women who would never stay with you. That way when they do leave, you’re safe.” She looked up at him, forcing his gaze to meet hers. Forcing him to see what this was doing to her.
“I think they leave because you give them nothing to stay for,” Jo said softly. “They weren’t women to you, they were causes.”
“You’re wrong.” But she’s not, his brain whispered. The women he’d slept with in the past had all been unhappy. He’d told himself that he’d lived the way he had to protect his own heart. But had he been sabotaging himself all along? Making sure that he’d never stumble on happiness?
“See,” Jo said, tapping the toe of her boot against the dirt, sending up tiny dust clouds. “I don’t think so. I think you set yourself up to fail. I think you like being alone. Because that way, you never have to try. Even the woman you loved was still in love with someone else and you can’t forgive her for that.”
“Bullshit.” His chest was tight, his breath coming in strangled gasps. Her words pushed through his mind and added to the chorus of everything Grace had said to him just the day before. Truth? No.
Shaking her head, she gave him a smile filled with regret. “You have one-night stands with women you’d never be interested in for the long haul. Then you hold up their leaving as proof that relationships don’t last.”
“Really?” he reminded her. “Well, I slept with you, too.”
“The exception that proves the rule,” Jo said. “And even then, you kept expecting me to get up and walk away. When I didn’t play the game as expected, you practically threw me out, with all that talk about ‘healing’ me, just so you could stay in charge.” The toe of her boot stopped tapping and she swung her head to the other side, the ponytail keeping time. “You’re cut off, Cash. You won’t let anyone in.”
“I’m not cut off from everything. I’m a part of this town,” he said, trying hard now to show them both that he wasn’t as cold and distant as he was suddenly feeling.
“No you’re not.” She drilled an index finger into his chest. “You stay out here, away from everyone. Even when you’re trying to help—with stunts like the Money Fairy—you do it anonymously. You don’t want to step in and have people count on you. You think they’ll all let you down, so you make sure they never get the chance to actually do it.”
The music from the workroom soared around them. The ducks on the lake squabbled and squawked and the wind pushed through the trees, rattling new leaves like silken wind chimes.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cash sighed, stepped around her and stalked toward the workshop. He couldn’t stand there looking at her and not touch her. He couldn’t listen to her and not want to defend himself. And damned if he could think of a way to defend his position at the moment.
Naturally, Jo stayed just a step or two behind him.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about and we both know it.” She grabbed his arm, her strong fingers digging into his flesh as she jerked him around to face her. “You’re hiding, Cash.”
“Then I’m not doing much of a job,” he pointed out. “You keep finding me.”
“You know what I mean.”
Yeah, he did. And a part of him knew she was right. Fine. He had kept himself separate from the town. From the people who might have been his friends. And the women in his life had never meant anything more to him than a few hours of shared pleasure.
But he had reasons for living as he did.
“And what about Jack?”
“Huh?” He blinked down at her.
“He’s just a little boy, Cash,” she said softly, her voice strained. “You became his friend. He cares about you. And now you’re shutting him out, too. Why?”
“God, Jo, I could have killed him.” Guilt swamped him, pushing aside everything else. “I was careless. He was curious and he could have died. It’s better to just—”
“Leave?” she asked, her voice even softer now.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he said, shifting his gaze to hers, hoping to read understanding there.
He didn’t. And that fact jabbed at him. Had he done to Jack exactly what adults had done to him when he was a kid? God. When had life gotten so damn complicated?
“See, Cash? You leave, too.”
Reaching out for her, he took her by the shoulders and let himself relish, just for a moment, the feel of her beneath his hands again. Then he let her go. “This is my choice, Jo. Mine. I’ve never had a relationship that worked out and I’m not going to experiment with you.” That was true enough, though except for Diane, he’d never really tried to have a real relationship. “I thought we could be friends. Fine. We can’t. So this is where it ends. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You really are an idiot, Cash.”
“Thanks very much.”
“So what if things go wrong?” she asked, and her impatience fired a spark of temper in her eyes. “You work through it. You shout, you fight, you make up. That’s life. It’s messy. It’s dangerous and it’s painful. Nobody’s happy all the time, Cash. If you were, you’d get locked up in a rubber room and shot full of Thorazine. For God’s sake, I was raped. My father had an affair while my mother was dying. Jack’s a little boy and his mother died. Shit happens.
“The way you survive is leaning on the people you love. Don’t you get it, Cash? Love’s a risk, but it’s the only one worth taking.”
Taking a chance, she held out one hand to him, hoping he’d take it. Hoping he’d believe in them—believe in her enough to r
isk his heart.
He stared at her for so long and so hard, Jo thought that maybe she’d gotten through. Maybe her words had battered away at the wall he’d erected around his heart, his soul.
She understood the fear of pain. Understood wanting to avoid it. But damn it, she was Italian. She could never understand turning down a chance at love.
“I can’t do it.”
All the air left her as her empty hand fell back to her side. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Doesn’t matter.” A shutter dropped over his eyes, and instead of the pain she’d felt in him a moment ago, now there was just cool detachment. “See, I’d rather lose you now, than later.”
She reached up and snatched her hat off, wanting to throw it to the ground and jump up and down on it in frustration. Her emotions were raw, chafed, and sore. In just a few minutes’ worth of talk, he’d battered a tender heart and ruined a perfectly good daydream of happily ever after. Finally, though, she welcomed a slow burn of anger, warming the chill inside. “Why are you so damn sure you’re going to lose me?”
“Because I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved—except Grace. I want you, Jo, but I won’t risk it. Not even for you. Because if I did and lost you anyway, the pain would kill me.”
“You’re an idiot.”
A sad smile curved his mouth briefly. “You’ve said that before.”
Tears made him blurry, but she fought them back, refusing to let him see her cry. Her mouth worked as she battled for control and she didn’t speak again until she was sure her voice wouldn’t break as neatly as her heart had.
“Yeah, but this is the first time I’ve really meant it.” Sadly, she turned for her truck and paused with one hand on the door handle. Turning to look back at him one last time, she whispered, “I guess Mike was right after all. You don’t deserve me.”
At the Stevenson job, Hank Marconi stood back to take a long look at the cement slab being poured. His sub-contractor, Reilly Concrete, didn’t need any help, but Hank preferred keeping an eye on things.
Maybe, he thought, if he’d been paying closer attention over the years, he might have been able to find a way to help Josefina earlier. If he’d opened his eyes, he might have noticed that there was something going on between Cash and Jo without having to be told by a ten-year-old boy.
But, he thought, folding his hands atop a shovel handle and resting his chin on them, like Grace always said, things happen when they’re supposed to. He wasn’t sure he believed that entirely, but it was more comforting than sorting over your mistakes.
“Henry?”
Surprise jolted him, but he straightened up and turned around, already smiling as he watched Grace approach. Amazing that just hearing her voice could make him feel like a teenager again. His palms went damp, his heartbeat quickened, and his stomach jumped with excitement.
He walked to meet her, holding out one hand to help her make her way across a minefield of construction tools. She was small and perfect. From her neatly styled hair to the designer shoes on her tiny feet. He was a lucky man and he knew it. He’d found real love, twice in a single lifetime.
When his wife, Sylvia, died so long ago, she’d taken most of his heart with her. He’d been lost in his own misery—until Grace. She’d helped him to live again. She’d shown him that love wasn’t only for the young.
“What brings you out here?” he asked, guiding her to a chair in the far corner of the Stevenson yard.
The roar of the cement truck moaned on as the workers scooped the wet stuff out with shovels.
“I called Mike,” Grace said, pitching her voice to be heard over that roar. “She told me where I could find you. I had to see you, Henry.”
“Grace.” He went down on one knee in front of her and took both of her hands in his. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, and squeezed his hands. “And everything.”
For the first time, he noticed that her hair wasn’t entirely perfect today. A strand or two was out of place and the makeup she never left the house without had been slapped on hurriedly. “You’re starting to worry me.”
“No, no. It’s not like that. Oh, Henry.” She pulled her hands free to cup his bearded face. “I’m such a fool.”
“Says who?”
“Me, you wonderful man. But thank you for automatically leaping to my defense. Though I don’t deserve it.” She laughed and he felt better, but things were still pretty strange.
“You want to tell me what’s going on, Grace?”
“I’ve come to my senses, Henry. Finally and at long last, I’ve come to my senses.”
“Still not making things clear, honey.”
“I know, but I will. You’ve asked me to marry you three times, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” He said it gruffly, remembering how she’d turned him down every time. It was the only flaw he’d ever found in her. This refusal to share his name. “And you said no all three times. What’s your point, Grace?”
“My point is that I want to ask you this time, Henry. I want you to forgive me for being so stubborn and prideful and foolish. For not having the strength of heart that you have.”
“Grace—”
“I’m asking you to marry me, Henry. Soon.”
Pleasure swelled in his chest and his heart felt full enough to burst, but he had to know. “You’ve always said you preferred living in sin with me. What changed your mind?”
She leaned into him, kissed him hard and fast and then smiled wistfully. “I realized, Henry, that the only sin between us was the one I kept making. The sin of not appreciating your love. The sin of cowardice. I was too afraid to try again. Too afraid of my past to see a future.”
He smiled. “And now?”
“Now, the future is all I see. And my future is you. I love you, Henry Marconi, and I would be so proud to be your wife.”
Emotion clogged his throat and filled his eyes. Carefully, as if she were made of spun sugar, he pulled her into his arms and held her close, next to his heart.
“Marry me, Gracie, amore mio, my love.”
She pulled back, looked him in the eye, and crying, said, “Yes, please.”
“Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“You should be happy for Papa,” Sam told Jo as she marched in familiar circles around Mike’s sofa.
“I am happy for him,” Jo said, thinking about the look on her father’s face that evening when he’d broken the news. Heck, even Nana had bent far enough to wish him luck now that he would no longer be sinning.
“But don’t you think it’s a little pathetic? On the same day I crash and burn with Cash, my father gets engaged? What kind of universe is this?” Oh God, oh God. She wanted to cry, but there just weren’t any more tears. She wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t help. She wanted to go see Cash.
And knew she couldn’t.
“What’d Cash say?” Mike asked the question they’d all been dancing around.
Jo stopped walking, and looked out at Jack, playing catch in the front yard with Lucas. The boy would heal, she thought. And so would she. Eventually. “Doesn’t really matter how he said no, does it?”
She turned back around to look at her sisters as outside, the baseball slammed into the house with a thud.
“The point is, Cash loves me but he’s too damn stubborn to admit it. And short of torture, I can’t think of a way to make him say the words.” Amazingly enough, there were a few tears left. She wiped them away. “Besides, I don’t want a man I have to force to love me. So. It’s over.”
“Doesn’t sound over to me,” Sam muttered.
“It will be, as soon as I stop thinking about him,” Jo told her. “Shouldn’t take more than a year or two. Or a dozen.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“Thank you, Sam. He is.”
“He doesn’t deserve you.”
She smiled at Mike. “I told him you said that.”
A second passed, then two, then another. And finally, Jo erupte
d, breaking the silence with a heartfelt question. “Who wants him, anyway?”
“Uh, you?” Mike asked.
She flopped onto the couch. “I hate when you’re right.”
Twenty
Cash’s eyes felt gritty. Like marbles stuck in a bucket of sand. He reached up and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger, but it didn’t help. What he needed was sleep. But every time he shut his eyes, he saw Josefina. Saying good-bye to him.
For two days—or was it three?—he’d been in a fog. He heard Jo’s voice, saw the disappointment etched onto her features, heard the rumble of the truck engine as she drove out of his life.
Blowing out a heavy breath, Cash ripped a slice of bread into bits and tossed them out onto the surface of the lake. The ducks came close, zeroing in on the free food like missiles on a guidance system. He smiled in spite of the thoughts crashing through his mind like bumper cars with crazed kids at the wheel.
Absently, he continued feeding the ducks while at the same time he sorted through those careening thoughts, trying to find his way again. His road had always been clear to him. He’d known what to do, how to act, what to think.
Now, it seemed as though the more time he put into trying to figure things out, the fuzzier everything got. He tossed a chunk of bread at the male duck, who, instead of eating it, used his bill to push it at his mate. “Even ol’ Donald there’s got his priorities straighter than you do,” he muttered.
But then Donald Duck, sitting in his little lake, didn’t have to worry about his mate flying off and leaving him. “Or do you?” he asked, tossing the last of the bread at the pair of squawkers. “Do you worry and love her anyway?”
Man, you are in deep trouble when you start having meaningful dialogues with ducks.
Dropping to the dewy grass at the edge of the lake, he drew his knees up, braced his forearms atop them, and let his empty hands dangle. Cash stared past the reeds, dipping and swaying in front of him, to the center of the lake. He stared blindly at the wind-driven ripples on the cool surface. The morning sunlight glanced off the lake and shot into his already aching eyes, but Cash figured he had the extra pain coming. Christ knew, he’d caused Jo plenty.
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